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Friday, May 24, 2019

Announcing Junesploitation 2019!

by Patrick Bromley

You want to get nuts? Let's get nuts.
We're just a week away from Junesploitation, our annual month-long celebration of exploitation and genre films.

You know the drill: For those of you new to Junesploitation, here's how it works: each day of the month has its own theme, and you're supposed to watch a movie that ties into that theme. How you interpret the connection is entirely up to you, which means if you have no interest in exploitation or genre movies that's ok and you can still join in! If you're not into Spaghetti westerns, you can watch High Noon or True Grit or Tombstone on June 4! Not a fan of sleazy prison movies? Feel free to check out The Shawshank Redemption on June 18. This month is supposed to be fun -- an excuse to watch movies every day and talk about them with one another. There are no "right" movies to watch. It's participating that gets you in the spirit, not watching a bunch of cheap, violent sleaze. That stuff is just a bonus.

If you do like those kinds of movies, though, or if you're willing to give them a shot, it's super easy to participate in Junesploitation thanks to streaming services. Netflix isn't a ton of help, but Amazon Prime Video has a deep library of titles and there are a number of streaming platforms devoted to just these kinds of movies: Shudder, Full Moon Streaming, and Brown Sugar are some of the big ones. Free services like Vudu, Tubi.TV and Vidmark (on Roku) also have a number of titles you might want to check out this month. And while I rarely advocate watching movies on YouTube, there's a lot of cool and obscure stuff to be found there if you're willing to look. Stay tuned for our annual Junesploitation Primer and upcoming installments of I Stream, You Stream for help on where to find some good titles.

Here is this year's schedule, featuring a few new categories and a bunch of returning favorites:

So curious to see what people will watch for SOV day. If anyone needs recommendations, feel free to hit me up as I'm a huge fan of that sub-genre. I highly recommend the book "Analog Nightmares" which was released this year if you are at all interested in SOV Horror films.

If you aren't well versed in the genre, can't go wrong with "Blood Cult" (1985) as it still maintains suspense and a sense of "familiarity" to slasher Horror tropes. Tim Ritter's "Truth or Dare" (1986) is batshit and the Polonia brother's "Splatter Farm" (1987) is fun. Just like most sub-genres, there are so many different ways you can go with what to watch.

These are really fun. Feeders has a very interesting story behind its release in the USA as Blockbuster Video was trying to capitalize on the success of "Independence Day" so they ordered a massive amount of copies of Feeders and everyone who rented it was really pissed off, except for me ��

Hoorah for Junesploitation! It gives me a reason to be happy that half of the year is gone already. (Otherwise, it is not a pleasant fact.) I am looking forward to reading about what everyone is watching.

My list is coming together quickly. I have saved several films on the DVR for this month. This is also a good chance to dive into my movie collection, which I do not do enough of in spite of steadily adding to it.

I am especially pleased to see a Vinegar Syndrome day this year. I just purchased a bunch of films for the company's website sale this weekend. A lot of titles are half-off.

Been waiting for this ever since F This Movie Fest ended! Per my own personal rules, these are all first time watches (and hopefully I'll be able to watch more than one movie per category on certain days). Hope to review them all (both here and on Letterboxd).

I'm excited as always, but this is going to be an exhausting June for me as I just today started running a different theater but have to keep an eye on my old one until my replacement is officially selected and takes over (the theaters are about 15 mins away from each other so it's not that bad, but it's an extra workload especially during the summer movie season).

Looking forward to trying to come up with some sort of theme for how I want to tackle this, and ordered a few things from Vinegar Syndrome's Halfway to Black Friday sale which just started.

Ok, my theme for this Junesploition is actually getting my money's worth out of the various streaming services I subscribe to rather than running out and buying a bunch of new stuff. With the exception of SOV day, everything on here is streaming.

I know Patrick comes up with streaming suggestions each week so I may double up with his picks here and there, but this is what I've got so far:

My list for the month! Believe it or not, these will be all first time watches for me. Hopefully some days I'll get it more than one (especially on the weekends), but this is what I'll try to stick to at least. I'm especially excited to dive into some Giallos this month.

At risk of violating the premise of Junesploitation, I chose to use this as an opportunity to watch a bunch of Criterion movies as I try to work my way through the Criterion Collection. I hope you all will forgive me.

My #1 rule: only watch movies I hadn’t seen be for.

So if I could not find a Criterion movie I hadn’t seen that matched the theme, I picked a non-Criterion movie that I hadn’t seen but matched the theme.